Spring and Asia Art Archive have invited Sumangala Damodaran to perform a concert featuring songs from India’s anti-colonial and immediate post-colonial resistance movement as part of AAA’s Mapping Asia project. The songs, in six Indian languages, have been archived and interpreted by Damodaran, and belong to the tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association. The songs cover important historical events like the Second World War and the Bengal Famine and reflect impulses and influences from various Indian, world musical and poetry traditions. In addition, the programme will incorporate Hong Kong protest songs as we consider the universality of the song as an expression of resistance. (Find an entire song list with lyrics as well as an essay by Damodaran in the Spring Workshop Archive Dropbox.)

Damodaran will be accompanied by her ensemble of musicians Pritam Ghosal, Mark Aranha and Neelambari Bhattacharya, and joined by Simon Hui of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and Billy of mininoise, a grassroots folk band in Hong Kong.

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